The bottleneck facing local public administration is no longer money, no longer technology, nor a lack of data. It is the ability to build a decision and to defend it, and the tools for doing so are already available today.
OpenEconomics at the ANCI Lazio Training Camp
Today and tomorrow OpenEconomics is taking part in the Training Camp and Regional Assembly of ANCI Lazio, in Sperlonga. Today in particular, at 3pm at the Cinema Augusto, within the panel “Territories in transition: innovating to compete”, President Gianluca Calvosa brings to an audience of mayors, officials and local administrators a specific point: the strategic crux of the transformation of public administration is case-building capacity: the ability to build a decision and to defend it before citizens and oversight bodies. At the event OpenEconomics is also presenting Civiqa, the platform through which it applies to the governance of local areas the method developed over years of work with large companies and financial institutions.
Rising complexity, falling headcount, excess data
Local authorities are managing growing complexity with an ever smaller workforce. Over the next seven years Italy's municipalities will lose around 145,000 employees, 46% of their permanent workforce: this is certified by IFEL, ANCI's foundation. And over the next seven years around 145,000 departures are expected: 46% of the permanent workforce. The figure does not describe only a staff shortage. It describes a loss of institutional memory: the knowledge of how a case file is prepared, of why a choice was made in a certain way, of which mistake not to repeat. And this exposes whoever signs to a series of risks.
At the same time, there has never been so much data available: harmonised accounts, the land registry, regional open data, the National Digital Data Platform: the NRRP funded the collection of a great deal of data. But abundance is not in itself an advantage: it generates further entropy if no one interrogates it. Data becomes an asset only when someone reads and interprets it. And this requires the two things public bodies often lack: time and specialists.
Funding bodies already assess in a different way
Those who provide the funding, meanwhile, already assess applications and projects in a different way. Cassa Depositi e Prestiti measures its own operations against a declared model of risk, return and impact. The Istituto per il Credito Sportivo assigns SROI and ESG ratings to its disbursements. The European Union has, for at least two programming cycles, reasoned in terms of outcomes rather than outputs.
When a municipality comes to the counter with a request, the funding body expects a project: a case, with precise and credible figures, that can withstand challenge. The gap between public bodies is no longer only digital. It is argumentative: there are those who can speak the language of the funding bodies, and there are those who cannot speak it, not because their projects are worse, but because they are not presented in a verifiable way.
From fear of signing to the documented signature
Documenting the reasons behind decisions becomes even more important in the light of the reform of the Court of Auditors. It was presented as the answer to the “fear of signing”. Law 1 of 2026 narrows gross negligence, the basis for liability for damage caused to the public administration, to specified categories of conduct, and widens the exemptions for those who have followed prevailing guidance. Read carefully, it says something more precise: it does not protect those who decided well. It protects those who can demonstrate how they decided.
It is the same logic as value for money, the criterion that is replacing spending capacity as the measure of judgement: those who can demonstrate the impact of their choices will have more direct access to resources.
The requirements for decision-support tools
In the light of all this, solutions supporting administrative procedures must meet three requirements.
• Rest on official and verifiable data: an analysis that cannot be cited within a formal act has no value, however accurate it may be.
• Leave the decision to the person and record the reasoning that preceded it, not just the final recommendation.
• Cover the entire cycle: from planning to reporting, not an isolated step, otherwise the same data risks having to be re-entered by hand several times.
The bottleneck in which public administration finds itself will not be resolved with more technology. It is resolved with a method and with tools that hold together data, assessed alternatives and documented accountability. This is the theme we are bringing today to the ANCI Lazio panel, and it is the reason we are presenting Civiqa here: a tool designed to support public decisions across the entire cycle, from planning to reporting.
A defensible public decision is not one that no one can have doubts about. It is one whose reasons the authority can reconstruct at any moment.
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